Alice
Bernardo Sassetti


“Alice” is the soundtrack for the film with the same title by young Portuguese director Marco Martins. A winter film demanded a winter music, and that’s what composer and jazz pianist Bernardo Sassetti conceived – the music of a cloudy, raining Lisbon, with people walking fast in the streets, under their umbrellas, hurrying to arrive home safe and dry. A solitary, melancholic, colour deprived Lisbon, the one you can’t find in postcards and where you can be lost. A 3 year old girl, Alice, disappears, and her desperate father tries everything to find her, either distributing flyers with the photo of his child and asking questions to indifferent and hostile people – “have you seen her?” – or positioning video cameras on the trees. Every night he watches the videotapes, trying to discover in the faces of the walkers the one who might know something of the terrible mystery. Maybe the kidnapper himself. Sassetti’s obsessive but quiet music reflects the silent madness of this man. A very simple melody is repeated with subtle variations, and when it seems to go somewhere, the theme is introduced again and the composition returns to the point of departure. A clarinet (Rui Rosa) symbolizes the voice of Alice and a double bass (Yuri Daniel) represents the city as a constant menace. We hear the sounds of the traffic, voices, unidentified noises, the rain, and above all the breathing of Alice’s father in his quest. This is indeed cinematic music, full of inner images, just like a bad dream, and the best work Bernardo Sassetti ever wrote and recorded for the big screen. Highly recommended.